


the silent stars go by

by beingevil



Category: Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 23:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21107453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beingevil/pseuds/beingevil
Summary: Reuenthal can’t go home again.Doctor Who AU, Time Lord Yang and Companion Reuenthal.





	the silent stars go by

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the world in your eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15693033) by [iserlohn (lincesque)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lincesque/pseuds/iserlohn). 

> Doctor Who modern day AU, posted in honour of Reuenthal's birthday month. Today is incidentally also the [LOGH stageplay Reuenthal actor's birthday](https://twitter.com/gineiden_stage/status/1185887352922791941).
> 
> _Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine._
> 
> _And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others._
> 
> _And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about._
> 
> **Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore**

“Are you all right?”

It’s the third time tonight Mittermeyer has openly asked the question. That doesn’t include the countless worried looks he and Eva have shot Reuenthal over the course of dinner, or the unsubtle questions about whether he’s been sleeping and eating.

Reuenthal looks directly at them. The motion, however slight, makes Felix, nestled in his arms, stir in his sleep. Everyone, Reuenthal included, freezes momentarily.

But Felix only buries his face further into Reuenthal’s shoulder and continues sleeping.

Once sufficient time has passed to ensure Felix’s uninterrupted slumber, Mittermeyer resumes the line of questioning.

“That,” says Mittermeyer, gesturing at his sleeping son and then to Reuenthal, “Would never have happened before you _disappeared_.”

Unspoken is the accusation _why won’t you tell us what happened to you_?

There is no way that Reuenthal can give voice to the fact that Felix’s steady breathing, the solid reality of the boy on his shoulder centers him, somehow.

So strange that the weight of a human life should feel so slight. 

It grows late and Reuenthal makes his excuses to leave. Mittermeyer and Eva take turns to persuade him to stay the night, then invite him back for dinner when he won’t be dissuaded.

Getting Felix out of his arms and into Mittermeyer’s calls for some delicate manoeuvring, but they manage it, despite a close call where Felix, still blissfully asleep, manages to snatch a fistful of Reuenthal’s shirt.

Eva touches his arm briefly as they show him to the door. There’s a look in her eyes makes him think she might understand, as she smiles gently at him and lets him leave.

Mittermeyer rests his hand on Reuenthal’s shoulder. In that moment, their faces are so alike in their shared concern. It almost moves him to tell them.

Except how could he even begin to describe the Hyperion, where would he even begin to tell them about Yang?

He spends yet another night on the rooftop, gazing up at the endless stars, long-abandoned wine glass at his feet.

There is no earthly intoxication equal to Yang.

* * *

He was a fool to think that leaving Yang would be the end of it.

Even as he was kissing Yang goodbye in the rain, he had already known in his bones that would be no leaving him.

He had to try, anyway.

Yang had restored him to his life mere weeks after stealing him out of it. He knows he’s been very fortunate – navigating time was far from a precise science, and Yang could have put him years, decades or even centuries out of time.

Reuenthal goes back to his life. Or tries to.

For him, it’s only been a few weeks since he stepped into the Hyperion and away from this world, but in his absence, Mittermeyer has managed to alert every police department in every country Reuenthal could conceivably have been in, every hospital he could have possibly expected to end up in, and every financial institution who’s ever had the most tenuous of relationships with him. It’s also how he ends up living with the Mittermeyers for the first few weeks after his return, with Mittermeyer alternating between yelling at him and watching him like a hawk.

Eva was much calmer, although visibly displeased with him for making them both worry.

Felix, of course, doesn’t care, greeting him with the same delighted smile, tiny hands reaching out to him. Reuenthal isn’t above using Felix as a shield from the Mittermeyers’ questions – only an idiot would miss the way their eyes go soft when they see him with Felix in his arms.

In the midst of appointments with lawyers, police officers, and an endless stream of relationship managers, Reuenthal can’t help but think proving that he is indeed alive is so much harder than simply disappearing off the face of the earth had been.

In retrospect, he really should have put more thought into making arrangements before leaving Earth with Yang.

* * *

The man who stepped into the Hyperion without a glance backwards is not the man who returns.

Stepping back into his old life is a slow and painful process when the echoes of Yang are everywhere.

Yang’s absence is like a crack in the wall, a rip in space time. A hollow in the centre of his universe that won’t go away, no matter who or what he tries to fill it with.

Some days he watches the city lights from his window and thinks of galaxies light years away. On others he makes himself tea and remembers everything that he walked away from, but can’t seem to leave behind.

Often, he finds himself back on the rooftop, losing himself in the slow dance of the endless stars.

The Mittermeyers call, visit, and ask him over often. On some level he thinks they realise that they are one of his few links to this world. Sometimes he forgets where he is and he’s back in another place, another time; sometimes it almost feels as if Yang is just in the next room, around the corner, waiting for him to turn around. It takes Felix opportunistically grabbing a fistful of his hair, Eva’s gentle hand on his shoulder, Mittermeyer’s voice to rouse him out of the dark place that’s all too easy to slip into.

The days pass and Reuenthal slowly begins to realise there is no forgetting Yang.

* * *

Yang comes to mind in the strangest of moments.

Running through the Mittermeyers’ garden after Felix, who is surprisingly fast for a child who has only recently learned how to walk, puts him in mind of racing through the starfields with Yang. Brushing past the tall sunflowers that are Eva’s pride and joy makes him think of everything else in the universe searching for its lost sun.

He already knows there is no sun in all the galaxies that can compare to Yang’s smile.

Once Yang took him to a dark world of whispering forests unlike anything he had ever seen. When he fell asleep on the planet that night, he dreamed long green dreams of the sunlight and an awakening he knows isn’t his own.

On some days, returning to this world seems much like another of those dreams.

He hasn’t brought anyone home since his return. He knows what it is to kiss Yang on the edge of wild space, and now no other kiss in the world can compare. Sometimes he suspects that whatever wildness, whatever magic is out there in space and time, has made a home in his blood and bones, sunk its fingers deep within him and will never let him go.

* * *

  
On a planet as far away from his solar system as the sun is from the edge of space known to mankind, Yang tells him that there is a fish that writes poetry in the sands of the underground lake. It sees the stars from its world under the waves and writes of them. 

Reuenthal naturally cannot read the poetry, but Yang can. Yang is always subtly sad after he translates one of the works.  
  
Reuenthal doesn’t need to understand sandfish poetry when the curve of Yang’s smile, the lift of his shoulder, the sound of his laughter, make a language all their own.  


* * *

He gets better, or so he thinks. He returns to work after an extended leave of absence. His colleagues don’t treat him like glass the way the Mittermeyers do, which helps. They are just as curious, but they leave well enough alone when he asks for space.

Eva and Mittermeyer both take turns to conveniently be in the area for lunch, or be around his office when work ends for the day. Sometimes Felix is with them too, and this causes no end of speculation at work.

He doesn’t mind. It gives his colleagues something else to think about.

The end of the year approaches, marking nearly half a year since he last saw Yang. Work winds down and his colleagues slowly start disappearing off to various far-flung locales. Mittermeyer and Eva try to persuade him to come with them on their Christmas trip back home. He eventually manages to put them off it after weeks of hard work, including promising that he’ll see them after the new year.

He makes arrangements for a trip to somewhere he’s never been with Yang.

Mittermeyer calls every day. Eva sends photographs and videos of Felix and tells him that he is missed.

It’s… sweet, how hard they are fighting to keep him here.

* * *

New Year’s Eve finds him walking down a barren headland, wind whipping his hair, as star trails unfold above his head.

It is so very quiet, and it is almost as if he is the only one left in the universe.

And then, suddenly, he is not.

He knows this as well as he knows his own mind, the rip in space-time, the universe bending just that little bit to let Yang in.

There’s his Magician, looking almost exactly the same as the day Reuenthal last saw him, if a little worn around the edges, nervous smile playing around the edges of his mouth, as if unsure of his welcome.

“I tried to stay away from your homeworld as long as I could…” Yang’s voice trails off. If he says anything more, the wind snatches his words away.

Reuenthal can’t seem to stop looking at him, drinking up the sight of that familiar face. Distantly, he realises that a part of him genuinely thought he would never see Yang again.

He lets his eyes ask his question for him. 

Yang’s smile turns hesitant for a moment, then slides off his face.

“I missed you,” he says, quietly.

Reuenthal can’t help himself, then, as he closes the distance between them, tipping up Yang’s chin to claim his mouth with a kiss.

Yang’s arms settle around his shoulders then, pulling him close. It feels once again as if all the shards of his universe have come together at last.

Together, they watch the year turn as the silent stars go by.


End file.
